drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke, instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper.

22. In place of these, a lean bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of hand-bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens - election members of Congress — liberty-Bunker's Hill.

heroes of seventy-six — and other words that were a perfect jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

23. The appearance of Rip with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and children that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians.

24. They crowded round him, eying him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired "on which side he voted." Rip started in vacant stupidity.

25. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear whether he was Federal or Democrat.

26. Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend this question; when a knowing, self-important old gentleman in a sharp cocked hat made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and the left with his elbows as he passed; and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm a-kimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating as it were into his very soul, demanded, in an austere tone, what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village.

27. “Alas! gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!"

28. Here a general shout burst from the by-standers, "A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and having assumed a tenfold austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit what he came there for, and whom he was seeking.

29. The poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but merely came there in search of some of his neighbors who used to keep about the tavern.

30. "Well, who are they? Name them." Rip bethought himself a moment and inquired, "Where is Nicholas Vedder?"

31. There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder? why he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell about him, but that is rotten and gone too."

32. "Where 's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" "He went off to the wars, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress?"

33. Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him, too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war Congress! he had no courage to ask after any more of his friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"

34. "Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "oh, to be sure! that is Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree."

35. Rip looked and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up to the mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilder

ment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name.

36. "God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' end; "I'm not myself—I'm somebody else - that's me yonder — no — that's somebody else, got into my shoes- I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"

37. The by-standers now began to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief; at the very suggestion of which the self-important man with the cocked hat retired with some precipitation.

38. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman passed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool, the old man will not hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind.

39. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he. "Judith Gardener." "And your father's name?"

40. "Ah, poor man, his name was Rip Van Winkle; it is twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since; his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."

41. Rip had but one question more to ask, but he put it with a faltering voice: "Where is your mother?" "Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a bloodvessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedler."

42.

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms.

"I am

your father!" cried he; "young Rip Van Winkle onceold Rip Van Winkle now! Does nobody know poor Rip

Van Winkle?”

66

43. All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and, peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

44. Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth and shook his head; upon which there was a general shaking of the heads throughout the assemblage.

XIX. TOM PINCH'S JOURNEY TO LONDON. — CHAS. DICKENS.

I. It might have confused a less modest man than Tom Pinch to find himself sitting next that coachman; for, of all the swells that ever flourished a whip professionally, he might have been elected emperor. He did not handle his gloves like another man, but put them on—even when he was standing on the pavement, quite detached from the coach as if the four grays were, somehow or other, at the ends of his fingers. It was the same with his hat. He did things with his hat which nothing but an unlimited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom of the road could ever have made him perfect in. Valuable little parcels were brought to him with particular instructions, and he pitched them into his hat, and stuck it on again, as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such an event as its being knocked off or blown off, and nothing like an accident could befall it.

2.

3. The guard, too! Seventy breezy miles a day were

written in his very whiskers. His manners were a canter; his conversation a round trot. He was a fast coach upon a down-hill turnpike-road; he was all pace. A wagon could not have moved slowly with that guard and his key-bugle upon the top of it.

4. These were all foreshadowings of London, Tom thought, as he sat upon the box and looked about him. Such a coachman and such a guard never could have existed between Salisbury and any other place. The coach was none of your steady-going coaches, but a swaggering, dissipated London coach; up all night and lying by all day.

5. It cared no more for Salisbury than if it had been a hamlet. It rattled noisily through the best streets, defied the cathedral, took the worst corners sharpest, went cutting in everywhere, making everything get out of its way, and spun along the open country road, blowing a lively defiance out of its key-bugle, as its last parting legacy.

6. It was a charming evening, mild and bright. Tom could not resist the captivating sense of rapid motion through the pleasant air. The four grays skimmed along as if they liked it quite as well as Tom did; the bugle was in as high spirits as the grays; the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice; the wheels hummed cheerfully in unison; the brass work on the harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus as they went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the leaders' couplingreins to the handle of the hind boot, was one great instrument of music.

7. Yoho! past hedges, gates, and trees, past cottages and barns, and people going home from work. Yoho! past donkey-chaises drawn aside into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant horses, whipped up at a bound upon the little water-course, and held by struggling carters close to the fivebarred gate, until the coach had passed the narrow turning in the road.